Political Polarization 'Dangerous,' Psychologist Says

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CHICAGO - For the first time in American political history,
Democrats and Republicans have sorted themselves into a perfect
left-right split, a prominent political psychologist said this
week, calling the result a "dangerous era" in U.S. politics.

Traditionally, political parties have been
coalitions of broad groups of people, based more on industry,
region and interest group than basic morals, University of
Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt said here during a
lecture at the annual meeting of the Association of
Psychological Science. Since the 1970s and 1980s, however,
Americans have increasingly sorted themselves by

We've never had a perfect left-right sort before, and now we do,"
said Haidt, author of "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are
Divided by Politics and Religion" (Pantheon, 2012). This is
troubling, he said, because people tend to cluster around their
moral in-group and view outsiders with only suspicion, not
understanding.

The first psychologists to study the psychology of ideology and
morals focused on two main issues: harm versus care, and fairness
and judgment. Haidt and his colleages, however, have found
evidence that humans base their moral code on far more than "does
it hurt someone?" or "is it fair?"

In fact, Haidt has added four more moral dimensions to the mix,
bringing the grand total of basic moral drivers to six. The first
three — harm and care, fairness and justice, and liberty versus
oppression — motivate both liberals and
conservatives, he said. Liberals tend to care about harm and
care most, and conservatives least, but everyone takes these
issues into consideration.

How these issues manifest can depend a bit on ideology. Liberals,
for example, worry more about inequality for inequality's sake.
Conservatives worry more about proportionality, asking if
everyone is putting in the work to get their benefits. Both are
ways to think about fairness, but that doesn't mean the left and
right can't have screaming fights over which is more moral.

Likewise, Haidt said, absolutely no one likes to feel oppressed.
But the left tends to talk more about businesses and the rich as
oppressors, as in the Occupy Wall Street movement, which protests
the wealthiest "1 percent," while the right worries about
government oppression, as in Tea Party protests festooned with
"Don't Tread On Me" flags. [ Rising Rancor: One Nation, Divisible By
Politics ]

What conservatives care about

Beside these three more-or-less shared values, Haidt has
identified three more that matter only to conservatives. (In
these studies, conservatism and liberalism refer to social
beliefs, such as beliefs about gay marriage , not economic beliefs such as how much someone
likes the free market. These social beliefs occur along a
continuum, with the moral factors on a continuum of importance
as well.)

The first conservative-only belief is loyalty and betrayal.
People on the political right feel more strongly about group loyalty than people on the left, who tend to be ambivalent
about groups, Haidt said. John Lennon's "Imagine," in which he
sings about national borders melting away, is an
example.

"It's because of these sorts of arguments that come from the left
quite often that the right has a field day charging the left with
treason," Haidt said.

The second conservative-only value is authority. Hierarchy and
authority tend to be more important on the right — consider
religious beliefs that "God is in charge" — while the left
prefers to subvert authority. Leftist anarchists, for example,
sometimes rally around the slogan "no gods, no masters."

Finally, conservatives worry about issues of sanctity, while
liberals are more likely to take a "nothing is sacred" position.
In the realm of sexual purity , for example, conservatives are much more likely
than liberals to care about sexual sanctity and issues like
remaining a virgin until marriage, Haidt said. Even
flag-burning falls under the realm of sanctity. The best
predictor of how much a conservative will hate flag-burning is
how strongly he or she feels that some things are sacred, he
said.

The danger of moralized politics

The danger, Haidt said, comes from humans' innate tendency toward
tribalism. In the days of the Civil Rights movement and the
Vietnam war, there were liberal Republicans and conservative
Democrats. Today, that's hardly so. [ The Awa:
Faces of a Threatened Tribe ]

Looking back at political polarization in Congress in the last
century, "the bad news is that things get worse slowly and then
they get worse quickly," Haidt said. "The good news is that the
House [of Representatives] is now so polarized that it can't get
any worse."

What that means is that major votes are now almost entirely along
party lines. There is debate over whether the American
public , not just the political elite, is increasingly
polarized, but either way, the result has been a combative
climate in Washington, D.C.

The mid-20th century period when polarization was low was an
anomaly in history, Haidt said, and it's unlikely we'll get back
to that point. But being as polarized as America is now is
dangerous, he said. When politics are tied inextricably to
morals, everything becomes sacred, from guns to flags to race.
And when sacred values are threatened, people lash out. Debates
are no longer disagreement, they're treason. And political
opponents aren't just people with a different point of view.

"The worst person in the world is not your enemy," Haidt said.
"It's the apostate or the traitor on your own team."